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Monday, September 9, 2013

Kindness for Weakness by Shawn Goodman

I have never before read a book where the author considers
apologizing for the book in the author’s note. (I’ve read too many books where
I felt the author should have considered apologizing; that’s for another
review.) But a sort of apologizing is what Shawn Goodman does at the end of his
powerful young adult novel, Kindness for
Weakness:

“I wish I could offer an apology for the fact that this such
a sad book…”

I say to Mr. Goodman: No apology necessary. Sadness is real,
and so, unfortunately, is the despair and violence that often accompany it. And
while we need stories that give us hope, stories to push us through the tunnel and
into the light, we also need stories that acknowledge the light is sometimes
faint and sometimes eclipsed by the darkness, and thus we also need stories
that end ambiguously, or even bleakly.

Here is a hard truth about the life of James, the teenage
protagonist of Kindness for Weakness:
his life sucks. He lives a broken life with a broken mother and her abusive
boyfriend, who breaks James every chance he gets. James idolizes the physical
prowess and swagger of his older brother, Louis, but Louis left their home and
his life when Mom’s new boyfriend entered. James’s only refuge is in the books
he reads and discusses with his teacher, Mr. Pfeffer.(Their relationship reminds me of the relationship between
Leonard Peacock and his teacher Herr Silverman in Matthew Quick’s recent novel Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, another sometimes sad
book that owes no apologies for its ambiguous ending.)

When Louis re-enters James’s life, and offers him a job doing
the handoffs for his meth sales, we can predict what happens next: James is
arrested and sent to juvenile detention. But what happens to James at The
Thomas C. Morton Jr. Residential Center is less than predictable. Life at Morton is often nasty and brutish, as are many of
the residents and, sadly, several of the guards. Here James must face the
dilemma too many young men face in the real world: How do we survive a brutish
reality without losing our humanity? James is a decent kid, but how can he
remain decent without corrupt guards and vicious fellow juvenile inmates taking
advantage of his decency? In a context where any kindness is seen as weakness,
is it possible to defeat the darkness without becoming the darkness?

As Goodman also writes, unapologetically, in his author’s
note, “…in the face of violence, showing kindness requires tremendous strength,
and is often punished severely. That’s a terrible point…but one that deserves close
study.” Kindness for Weakness makes
the terrible point powerfully, and we find a terrible beauty to James, in all
of his human weakness. Highly recommended.